I've been going through this thing where I have so much good TV I feel like I need to start or catch up on, that I begin to feel paralyzed by all the options. It almost feels like a burden to mentally prepare myself to invest in a prestige show that I know will be worth it, but I have to pay attention to.

So instead I end up rewatching episodes of Game of Thrones or Friends for the 37th time, or whatever Marvel movie is on cable that day. Anyone else go through this?

This week kicks my television viewing into high gear. Watching the season premiere of This is Us right now, which I love so so so much. And Will & Grace starts again on Thursday! *so excited* And then there's like 10 shows in between all of this. My DVR is getting a workout this season.

Is anyone watching anything interesting? The Good Place and Superstore are on hiatus due to football, which is a shame because I could use a good comedy right now. Currently, I'm watching:

SMILF (Showtime): Terrible title, good show. About a single mother in South Boston. Created by and starring Frankie Shaw (some of you may know her as Shayla on Mr. Robot). She also writes and directs some of it. Each episode has been better than the previous one, and the latest one dealt with objectification, sexual harassment, and assault. Showtime likes to run itself like a broadcast network and run shows forever, but I don't know how many seasons this show can do unless Shaw expands it. It has a small, indie auteur feel to it like Atlanta and Louie.

The A Word (Sundance TV): British show about a dysfunctional family with a child newly diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. The first season was intense, but the second one has lightened up quite a bit -- the third episode was quite funny. Christopher Eccleston gets to act in his native accent.

Search Party (TBS): The second season just started last night, and it's really good so far (TBS airs two episodes each Sunday). Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson called it "A Biting Satire Made for the Trump Era": "From some angles, you could see it as a pre- and post-Trump satire, about a bunch of witless young (largely white) people thinking they’ve inherited a gentrified, Obama-era coolness and ease only to be proven terribly, terribly wrong."

Search Party (TBS): The second season just started last night, and it's really good so far (TBS airs two episodes each Sunday). Vanity Fair's Richard Lawson called it "A Biting Satire Made for the Trump Era": "From some angles, you could see it as a pre- and post-Trump satire, about a bunch of witless young (largely white) people thinking they’ve inherited a gentrified, Obama-era coolness and ease only to be proven terribly, terribly wrong."

I've been watching this too, and finished watching the new episodes. Given how the first season ended, I had no idea where this season was going to go, but I think these first two episodes give us a pretty good idea. There was an element of the first episode that I didn't like at all (the tension between those who knew what happened and those who didn't)...something about it felt really artificial, but once they got over that it became really fun and interesting!

My wife and I gave a shot to The Librarians and watched the first 3 and the 5th (we decided to skip to the next time Noah Wylie appeared because he seems to be the only thing that makes it worth watching (sorry Wolfram and Hart lawyer guy. I do see you trying, but it's not nearly enough)) and it is pretty awful. It has moments where it is quite amusingly awful, and I'm realizing that where I thought it might become endearingly awful I'm becoming pretty sure that will not be the case. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a top billed performance as bad as Rebecca Romijn on this show. Not hyperbole. I honestly don't think I've ever seen anyone act that badly in a starring role before. Wylie is kind of fun to watch, but man... it's pretty brutal.

@Travis I get The Librarians and The Magicians confused. One of them is referred to as "Harry Potter for grownups," so probably The Magicians for obvious reasons. I've seen a few bits of one of these shows and found it dreadful, but I can't remember which one it was.

@pavlovsbell Ha! I actually have the same problem with The Magicians and The Librarians. From the one episode of The Magicians that I watched, it wasn't great and I could see it as being seen as quite bad, but I thought it had enough potential to look at one or two more in case it came down to a clunky pilot that got better. I tend to give a lot of rope when something looks conceptually interesting and I get burned a lot, but I want to get back to trying it again just in case. Looks like it could end up being really fun if it gets better.

The pilot for the Librarians is really, really bad. Kind of like I said though, it has a sort of endearing, super over the top terribleness potential that I felt strongly in the pilot. I mean, it's just so bad that it's fun. As bad as Romijn is in general, and being the pinnacle of bad on the other episodes of the show that we watched, she is WAY worse in the pilot (I mean so, so, mind-blowingly bad (I typically don't like being this negative, but man, it's true) and poor Bob Newhard, bless his heart, just has no business being on screen at that point even in his very small role. Just too far gone. Wylie is charming but not very good himself (though in his case definitely in an endearing way). They were going for a sort of Dr. Who circa Matt Smith thing with him and it misses big time, but still in a fun way as awkward and bad as it is. If Wylie were a fixture I think I would be into it, embracing its problems, but with him as just a "couple of times a season pop in" and not as the focal point I think we're scrapping it. The rest of the cast is just kind of a charm vacuum in a show that would really need to really completely overflow with it to succeed.

@ghm3 Oh yes, I loved Fleabag. Very curious to see what she'll do with a second season.

Has anyone seen the trailer for Godless, a Soderbergh/Scott Frank joint? Drops on Netflix Nov. 22. Frank wrote Logan, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Karen Sisco, etc. Seems like he has a strong Elmore Leonard background, which bodes well for a western.

@ghm3 Oh yes, I loved Fleabag. Very curious to see what she'll do with a second season.

Has anyone seen the trailer for Godless, a Soderbergh/Scott Frank joint? Drops on Netflix Nov. 22. Frank wrote Logan, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Karen Sisco, etc. Seems like he has a strong Elmore Leonard background, which bodes well for a western.

Godless looks so good. That'll get me through the holiday oh so nicely.

There was a new Sesame Street this weekend ... I was actually excited to see it appear on my DVR because I've been home a bunch with my sick kiddo the last couple of weeks and am getting sick of watching reruns.

Some not so recent discoveries - Bates Motel well done horror and some great characters. Grace and Frankie fun, feel good comedy. Ripper Street dark Victorian setting procedural. Very theatrical too.

The Exorcist did I mention I like horror? In the Second season the priests go on the road and end up at an island in the Pacific Northwest which is haunted by a demon. It doesn’t help that the main setting is a foster home.

Just started Good Behavior good not great but enjoyable. Two damaged anti heroes - one a thief the other a contract killer team up. But I like it. Guilty pleasure for sure.

I tried to get into Ripper Street when it premiered, but it didn't catch for me at the time. Maybe I'll give it another shot because as @Dee with Ioan Gruffudd, I have a voice crush on Matthew Macfadyen.